by Tom Corbett
Rachel saw he was tormented. “I can figure out the rest.”
“I’m sure you can. Sex, for a man, is always a calculation between need and the price to be paid for satisfying that need. I knew this price here was large, incalculably large, and thus the terror. But all reason had fled. I can’t or won’t remember details, just her clothes flying off and some sounds she made, more like grunts. That day is with me. The mind screams for a do-over, but you know it is too late to turn back. It is such an odd moment, to be in diametrically separate places physically and emotionally.”
Rachel sat totally still, not quite comprehending the meaning of his last comment. Why was he telling her this now? He had revealed virtually nothing for decades and suddenly this painful moment from his past erupts to the surface. Was he confessing some deep guilt, sharing a cautionary tale, revealing some hidden dimension of his inner being? Confused, she did and said nothing. She decided to let him wander where he needed to go. “Of course.” She whispered as encouragement.
“It was over soon enough, a lot of pent-up need I suppose.” He suddenly looked searchingly at her. “Wait, am I embarrassing you? You don’t need to hear this crap.”
“No,” she murmured. “I’m a physician for god’s sake. There is nothing you can say that will embarrass me. Hell, I insisted that you open-up, and certainly didn’t expect no Hallmark mini-series.” She waited and hoped he would continue.
“Good, then you won’t be shocked by a Stephen King script. There was nothing else but to take her to bed. I so wanted to scream that this had been a mistake. Can we just forget what happened? But there are no do-overs anymore. Besides, she wept into my chest, so we became lovers. That was so cruel of me, perhaps my weakest moment. I couldn’t sleep that night. What was I going to tell her the next morning? How would I tell her to go away without breaking her? I doubt there is anything much worse than receiving unconditional love when you cannot return it. Then I wondered. Was she using birth control? Oh my god, I never asked, never used a condom. Most girls I knew were prepared, but Kit seemed so innocent. She probably thought it a sin to even consider using a contraceptive. Really, that would mean you were thinking about doing the deed.”
He paused again, looking uncertain. Uh-oh, Rachel thought, is that where he is leaving it? “Tell me, did you ever love Evan? Okay, here is why I ask. I never really knew him, but I never felt the two of you were close. In pictures, or when you mentioned him, I never felt warmth between the two of you. So—”
“Stop, I know what you’re doing.” But something about the look in his eyes told her that his story of Kit was finished for the moment. Funny, she thought. It had only been a day, and she was picking up his rhythms and signals. She was peering inside his head.
“Hey,” Josh said, “I opened a bit, now your turn. This is a two-way street or nothing.”
Let it go, she decided, he did have a point. “Love Evan? I thought I did, in the beginning, for a while. I thought it was okay, until he started screwing around. Well, it was more complicated, but at least I got Cate out of the deal. Thing is, I was clueless about what I was supposed to feel.”
“Yeah.” He smiled sardonically, looking at her with an intensity that unnerved her. “But you know what I’m talking about.”
Josh suddenly got up and strode into his office. She could hear him rumbling around the cabinet with the pictures. Rachel froze. “Oh no,” she said to herself, barely a whisper. He is getting the pictures. He will know. So what! Why the guilt? She was just naturally curious, and after all, they were not hidden. Still her heart pounded. It seemed a violation of some sort to her. And she was the good girl, the one that obeyed all the rules. But he walked back carrying a single photo, a picture that had seen many decades pass since the moment it had been captured for posterity.
“I always loved this one,” he said, sitting next to his sister. It was a picture of their parents, obviously looking at each other with affection. She looked hard at it, trying to gather intelligence from the scant clues available to her. The couple in the photo was young; children were a mere gleam in Big Jim’s eyes at best. And they were not in the States. It was England, maybe Ireland, from the architecture of the buildings in the background. “It is hard to imagine they ever had such affection when we knew them. But look, they were so attractive, so young and vital. When we were kids, they were going through the motions. But here, look! Look at his face. He is besotted. No wonder he worked so hard to get her to the States. She was a beauty. Remember Ora giving those piano lessons, she even got me to play? Where did she learn to play so well? I was always stunned that there were so many scruffy Irish kids who wanted lessons. They came from all over.”
“What she went through was incredible,” Rachel whispered. “We will never know the truth, but I’m certain that she converted to Catholicism for Dad. She had that zeal of a newbie, but there were things she mentioned from time to time, little suggestions. I would ask her about the past, but it was clear she didn’t want to go there. It is past, she would say, ending the discussion. But once, she mentioned Dad and guns and the cause. The damn cause, she doesn’t have any Irish in her, why would she give a damn about the cause? Anyways, she was sick at the time, dying, and thinking a lot more about things past. She mentioned what she called the thrill of her life. I had to push and prod a bit, but she mentioned running guns into Ireland. Can you imagine? But that’s what she said.”
“But that was way after the Irish civil war and way before the Ulster troubles, though I never had Dad’s passion for the history.”
Rachel picked up her thoughts. “Remember that Europe was headed for war. Everyone knew it, except that dolt Chamberlain. The IRA thought this was their best chance to bring Ulster back into the motherland. They were getting ready. When England was distracted, they would strike. I think there is even evidence that the leadership was in contact with the Nazis who would have been more than ready to help stir up trouble on England’s backside. Makes sense that the new Reich would spend a few deutsche marks to arm the rising, help the boys avenge the Easter debacle of 1916. If the Reich could get the Irish to rise-up and attack Northern Ireland during the planned cross-channel invasion, so much the better for the Nazis.”
“Holy shit, Mom the rebel. Can’t be, she was so, so domestic and meek and whatever. But that would explain so much.”
“Mom was never meek, just beaten down in the end.” Rachel added without hesitation.
“True enough. In any case, the Germans footed the bill to run guns from Scandinavia to Ireland. Must have been dangerous, running past the British navy. Dad was working ships then—he would have spent a lot of time in the UK. He would have gravitated to any romantic conspiracy that involved Irish freedom. Of course, that is how they met. Can you imagine, the two of them on small boats, darkened faces, running in high seas at night with no radar or moon to guide them. The risks must have been horrific. Just think of a passionate man to be smitten by this ethereal and brave and mysterious angel from the roof of the world.”
“Mom?” Rachel said with incredulity.
“Don’t think about her as we knew her.” Josh enthused. “When dad first met her, she is a young blond goddess who appears out of the North Sea mists like a dream. Someone like Dad would not have stood a chance against her romantic aura and mystery. And she? Well, he was a stud though I can never imagine that meant much to her. No, more likely she saw in him an opportunity. All the scraping by and near-death escapes of her past could have been behind her. With one stroke, she might get to America, the proverbial promised land. Must have been a powerful lure at the time. We always wondered why no pictures of a wedding. We joked that they were living in sin, which seemed so unlikely to us. But hell, you surely can imagine Dad not throwing a blowout party at his wedding. Hell, he was a ham, there would have been tons of pictures with him in every one of them. I bet they got married over there or, now that I noodle this a bit, they dummied up fake marriage papers to get her into the States. The IRA co
uld have done that to reward them for services rendered. Think about it, my logic is usually unassailable, that’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“I am thinking about it, and my conclusion is that you are suffering from delayed acid flashbacks from the sixties. And yet it fits.”
“But here is the thing,” Josh intoned. “We never saw any love, any affection. Did you ever see them kiss, embrace, hold hands?” When she shook her head, he continued. “No, neither did I. Hell, I used to joke that they had sex twice—me and you. They liked their first issue, me, but then seeing you, that was it.”
“Ha-ha, your so-called wit still sucks.” But she was smiling. But then he noticed the smile was thin, forced. “It was worse after you disappeared. They never talked. Dad seldom sang. Mom stopped playing the piano, mostly stopped at least. It was a perpetual wake. I tried but…you were the prince. No matter what I did, accomplished, the best I could get was the pat on the head. Top of medical school class at Johns Hopkins, and all I could get was a smile from Dad and a freaking handshake from Mom. What was with that? Dad would have thrown a goddamn ticker tape parade down Dorchester Street if you had gone to Notre Dame and scored one freaking touchdown. Mom used to brag about my grades when I was young, later she did not seem to care.”
“I probably would have played strong safety.”
“Not the point, nimrod.” she shouted, but then her cell phone rang. It was her paper coauthor who wanted to chat about a reinterpretation of the latest data runs. “This will take a while,” she mouthed toward her brother.
“I’ll do supper,” he mouthed back. Rachel winced. Somehow, nothing in her past relationship with Josh suggested any confidence in his culinary skills was warranted. He would prove her snap assessment to be in error. Unlike her, he had gotten accomplished in the kitchen.
CHAPTER 3
DAY 2
Rachel heard Josh puttering around the house the next morning. She thought about jumping up to join him but thought better of it. “Come on, Mo,” she heard faintly, then the door opened and closed.
A half hour later the door opened again. Josh paused at the smell of bacon sizzling in a pan. “My god, the domestic goddess strikes. Watch out, I can’t vouch for how long that stuff has been around.” Morris grunted, obviously displeased that his world had not returned to normal as he had hoped. But the pug recovered quickly and waddled over to his bowl to find fresh food awaiting. He glanced back at Rachel with a fresh appreciation before his head dipped back into the dish.
They sat down to the kind of breakfast he had not enjoyed in some time. “Good news to report.”
“Oh,” Rachel responded.
“Yeah, he had a first-class poop this morning, I think you threw him off yesterday. Mo is not a fan of change.”
“Sure, great breakfast talk. Damn, I remember when I hung on your every word, you seemed to have the sagacity of an omniscient wise man. Now you are reduced to a world-class connoisseur of dog poop.”
Josh smiled. “I would like you to know there are still women who appreciate my beautiful mind.”
“If they exist, my best guess is that their bra size exceeds their IQ.”
“Sexist,” he uttered.
“Pervert,” she retorted.
They both laughed simultaneously. Josh could once again see her as the high schooler who no longer looked upon him with awe and wonder, absorbing all he said. Now her razor-sharp wit was in full form, their exchanges would be quick and unforgiving. Outsiders probably would be taken aback, concluding that real animosity existed between them. The effect only served to motivate them further. In recent get-togethers, while brief and superficial, they had started to keep score but could never agree on who won.
“Okay, point for you,” he allowed. Josh looked at her closely as she smiled. She was twelve again, all ponytail and geeky glasses. He had slipped out of the house to head to a local playground where he would play some hoops. As he crossed the street, he heard the inevitable “wait for me.” Why couldn’t she be fascinated by boys, clothes, and gossip like the other girls? He looked back as she darted between the parked cars. It was like a newsreel repeatedly playing before him, no matter where he looked. It all happened in seconds though it seemed an eternity in his mind. One moment, her face was wide with excitement, her legs churning to catch up with him. The next would be an excruciating horror played out in super-slow motion. He tried to scream, but nothing came out. His voice was frozen somewhere that he could not reach. But he heard everything else, the tires squealing, the thud, and her short, piercing scream.
Then his voice finally erupted. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” came out as he raced to her prone, bleeding body. He frantically tried to figure out what to do, but his brain was unresponsive. It was wrong, he knew, she might have fractures that this movement would aggravate. Still, he scooped her up and ran to the car he had recently managed to buy, his first one. With blind urgency, he sped through the streets like the madman he had suddenly become, pulling into the emergency room within two minutes. The inside of his new car was covered in her blood, but he could care less about that. His stomach surged up to his throat he could barely breathe. She could not leave him, he would not permit that!
He seldom left her side the next several days, often holding her hand and talking with her. At one point, when it looked uncertain, he kissed her forehead before whispering in her ear. “Rach, don’t you dare leave me. I swear, if you try, I will follow you wherever you go and drag your sorry ass back. Do you understand me, do you?” He was certain he saw a smile briefly cross her face. She slowly started her comeback. His quick actions, he was told, might well have saved her life.
“Okay,” Rachel interrupted his reverie, “I’m not coming with you today. I have got to get back to that paper after last night’s discussion.”
“No problem, I’ve an end-of-semester committee meeting and a thesis defense so I would not be much fun anyways.”
“Then it would be like any other day.”
He smiled, appreciating anew just how good she was. “I really have to up my game again. Oh, and by the way, we’re having dinner with a few of my friends tonight.”
“Been to rent-a-friend again.”
“Ha-ha…” He walked toward the door, then stopped and returned to his office. As he retraced his steps to the front door, he dropped the box of pictures in front of her on the kitchen table. “If you’re going to snoop, you might as well do it in the open. One point for me.”
“May your camels come down with a debilitating disease and your testicles wither to the size of dried dates,” was all she could come up with while blushing profusely. After he was gone, she stared at the box. Not yet, she thought. Her mind wandered back to Josh’s much earlier question about her former husband. Had she loved him or any man? There was no easy response. She hardly ever thought of Evan; she never thought of him even while they were joined in matrimony. That level of indifference cannot be normal, she mused.
“This week is going to be tougher than I thought,” she said out loud to Morris, “but at least we have each other.” The dog merely eyed her with disinterest and curled up for a nap. “Typical male,” she sniffed.
Alone with her thoughts, she wondered why she had married Evan. He was a bit like her, dedicated to his craft, more of a clinician than she, but very focused on being a good doctor even if it were to a clientele drawn mostly from the upper crust of society. Perhaps it was too easy of a relationship and that’s why it had lasted so long. She never had to explain why she needed to get back to the hospital, the lab, a medical conference. It was a shared understanding—the work came first. After several months, he proposed. Rachel fought hard to bring back the moment. What had she felt? It was not love, maybe a kind of comfortable understanding? Was there even affection? Not really. He was acceptable, an easy fit into her life. She was inexperienced sexually when they met. There had been nothing in high school. Ora had been firm with her to keep her knees locked together. The message was clear—y
ou did not give it away. You had something with which to barter. Negotiating a good deal was paramount. Perhaps her brother was right about women, not that she would give him the satisfaction of an easy victory. Sex is a commodity with a price. The dance between the genders was little more than an elaborate ritual for arriving at a suitable bartering arrangement. For the female, what can I get for my sexual goodies? For the male, what should I pay to get laid, and what exchange currency should be used? Money and faux money were simple and direct, but did not always work. Sometimes you had to go deeper where suggestion of an emotional attachment became the lure. That was hard to monetize in a conventional sense and for the male, Rachel presumed, this would prove way more expensive than a few costly dates.
When she got to college, she was beyond Ora’s direct control. Something akin to a latent physical urgency interacted with basic curiosity. She started listening as a few of her female peers talked about their latest carnal experiences, late-night chats that she found fascinating, particularly the detailed discussions of techniques to achieve orgasm. On occasion, she felt as if she were listening to a clinical discussion of the best way to remove an appendix. Yet behind all the dialogue framed by the emerging feminist mantra of sexual equality, old emotional forms persisted. Even the more brazenly aggressive young women betrayed a yearning for intimacy. They might dissect various tactics for heightening their sexual response, but conversations typically returned to detailed examinations of various attributes of selected partners. So-and-so is funny but so self-centered. Or this one says he likes kids but doesn’t seem ambitious enough. Sex may be the proximate topic, but the distal focus seemed never to stray from identifying a suitable mate for the long haul. The subtleties of ways to secure commitment remained the favored topic du jour.